Jury Awards $11 Million to Bellweather Plaintiff In Wright Medical Defective Hip Implant Litigation
One of the first bellweather trials in the Wright Medical metallic hip implant litigation went to trial earlier this month, and the jury returned a verdict of $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages. A bellweather trial is part of a multi-district litigation (MDL). Like a lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, the bellweather plaintiff’s claim is used to test the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ claims and to help the parties get some picture of what common issues of law, fact, and damages might look like for the other claimants in the MDL.
In a product liability action, the plaintiff needs to prove that the defendant’s product was defective. This can be done in two ways: by showing that the product bears an unreasonably dangerous design, or by showing that the particular device that the plaintiff received suffered a manufacturing defect that rendered the product unreasonably dangerous.